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HIGHLAND PARK — Highland Park began practice for the
2012 football season this week.

For the first time in 39 years, though, Doug Gibbins didn’t join the Scots
under that broiling August sun. He has retired as the school’s head athletic
trainer, ending a 47-year career at area high schools.

“Sure, I’ll miss it,” Gibbins said. “I’ll miss being with the kids. I’ll miss
the camaraderie we had with the players, coaches and doctors.

“But I’m not going to miss that heat.”

Gibbins, 71, taped more ankles than he cares to remember. He provided
treatment for the aching muscles, swollen ankles and broken bones of football,
basketball and baseball players. He tended to the injuries of countless prep
overachievers plus some of the school’s most historic achievers.

Clayton Kershaw and Matthew Stafford were classmates at Highland Park.
Kershaw was the staff ace on the baseball team and Stafford the quarterback for
the football team. Kershaw went on to become the seventh overall selection of
the 2006 Major League Baseball draft, Stafford the first overall choice of the
2009 NFL draft.

In 2011, Kershaw won the National League Cy Young Award and Stafford
quarterbacked the Detroit Lions to their first playoff berth in 13 seasons.

Both sat on the training table of Gibbins as seniors at Highland Park.

Gibbins recalled an oblique strain suffered by Kershaw during his final year.
He missed several starts at the end of the regular season and into the playoffs
while the training staff worked furiously trying to get him healthy.

Kershaw returned in the regional quarterfinals against Justin Northwest, and
the Scots prevailed, 10-0, in a contest called after five innings because of the
mercy rule.

“Clayton faced 15 batters and struck out all 15,” said Gibbins, a former
baseball player himself at Texas Tech. “I’ve never seen a performance like that
in my life. Amazing. Clayton was just a great kid, highly motivated.”

Kershaw went 12-0 with an 0.77 earned run average as a senior with 139
strikeouts in 64 innings.

Stafford underwent arthroscopic knee surgery on the eve of his senior season.
Again, the training staff worked overtime trying to get its quarterback back
onto the field.

“He missed the first two games that year but came back strong,” Gibbins said.
“Luckily, we wound up playing 15 games that year — and won the state title.”

Gibbins was wearing his state football championship ring when I met him for
lunch last month. Stafford passed for 4,018 yards and 38 touchdowns that
season.

“Matthew was the most poised, most athletic kid I’ve ever seen,” Gibbins
said. “He never got rattled no matter what the situation in a game. He was
always cool, calm and collected in combination with being a great athlete. I
knew he’d make it in college. I knew he’d make it in the NFL. He’s the best I’ve
ever seen.”

Gibbins also has a state baseball championship ring from the 1997 season.
Those were two of the highlights from his career, which began at South Garland
High School in 1965 and also included short stays at Port Neches-Groves and
Mesquite before he reported for work at Highland Park in 1974.

But there were highlights off the field, as well. Working with some 75
student trainers over his career and watching four of them become doctors ranks
right up there.

Gibbins also remembers a game in his first football season at Highland Park
against Grand Prairie when an opposing player broke his neck. Both team doctors
and team trainers hustled onto the field to aid the stricken player.

“He was laying there motionless,” Gibbins recalled. “We were evaluating him,
talking to him, and he was trying to talk to us. His lips were moving but no
sound was coming out. We had him transported by ambulance to a hospital. He
recovered but never played football again. But he did run track for Grand
Prairie. That was in 1974.

“In 1988, we were at the Gopher Bowl for a game and this guy came up to me
and says, ‘Do you remember me?’ I said no, and he said, ‘I’m the guy who broke
my neck and you all took care of me. I’m coaching pee-wee football now.’”

Then Gibbins paused for a long moment.

“I felt really good about that,” he said.

And all of Highland Park feels really good about Gibbins.

“I got help from so many people along the way,” Stafford said, “and Doug
Gibbins was one of them. I spent a lot of time in the training room, just little
bumps and bruises, taping ankles and all that stuff. He was always just the
nicest man. He would do anything for you, just a really great guy.

“He put a lot of hard work into that school — and our school was better off
for it.”

Listen to Rick Gosselin at 10:50 a.m. Tuesdays on The Ticket
(KTCK-AM 1310) with Norm Hitzges.